For the sake of getting the proper help, this will be a somewhat long explanation. Several months back our windows sysadmin left the company, leaving 3 linux admins the job of running the exchange servers setup here. We do not know how the systems were configured originally, we only know just enough to get day to day things done. The process we go through to create a new mailbox is as follows: Open Exchange Management Console Go to Recipient Configuration Right-Click Mailbox, select New Mailbox From there we follow the onscreen prompts which seems simple enough. Users create without error. The only problem I am seeing is that I cannot open the address book and find that user in it. This has happened recently with several users on the server. Since I am not a windows administrator I am not even sure where to begin looking to resolve this. Ive worked pretty minimally with exchange and I would appreciate any assistance anyone can offer to try and correct this issue.

First you should check though OWA and putting the outlook client to Online mode - what happens do you see the user or not. Why i am asking this to make sure if it a problem with Offline address book or address list? Does this issue happen with all users? Are there any errors in event log of exchange related to users address list or OAB?Best Rgds, Ashish | Unified Comunication | MCTS | MCITP | Please remember to select option "Propose As Answer" if solution work for you | My posts hold no assurances, no promises, and they measured no rights.

The client is on online mode. I cannot see certain users either in OWA or through Outlook 2007. What I am doing is going to compose a message, clicking the TO button (in outlook 2007, on my mac, I click the address book next to the end of the TO field) to open the address book and I start typing the first few characters of the person I want to send the message to and they do not show up. This does not happen for all users. It only appears to happen for users added recently (I would say within the past few months). To answer your question about errors in the event log, if I knew which one to check I could tell you. Allow me to explain. Our windows setup is 3 Active Directory servers, 1 transport server, 1 transport backup, 3 exchange mailbox servers I checked the transport server and didnt see anything in the event logs about OAB. If you can point me in the right direction to look, I will go take a peek.

Check the Outlook client and ensure that it is not running in "cached mode."

Please run the followig command for problamatic user and see what happens:- Set-Mailbox -Identity <userName> -ApplyMandatoryProperties Are you able to send mail to problamatic user, looks like there may be some attributes missing at users ID. The above command should re-apply attributes to mailbox.Best Rgds, Ashish | Unified Comunication | MCTS | MCITP | Please remember to select option "Propose As Answer" if solution work for you | My posts hold no assurances, no promises, and they measured no rights.

their could be a possiblility of domain controllers replication - i hope all domain controllers are GC's and getting replicated well with each other.Best Rgds, Ashish | Unified Comunication | MCTS | MCITP | Please remember to select option "Propose As Answer" if solution work for you | My posts hold no assurances, no promises, and they measured no rights.

@Ashish I ran the command you suggested from the Exchange Management shell and this is what I received in return: WARNING: The command completed successfully but no settings of '[domain]/Users/[username]' have been modified. @Jose I believe that ALL of our clients using Outlook (ranging from 2003-2010) are setup to run in cached mode. I changed the settings on my account to not run in cached mode and I now see the users who were not appearing before, in the GAL. What I would like to determine is why they stopped showing up to begin with. Keeping in mind that this issue was only happening with users added in the past several months. Since I am not an exchange/windows admin, its possible that I am missing a setting during the setup process. If someone can point me to a section of the properties dialog box on a user to where this would add them automatically to the GAL, I will gladly do it each time I have to setup a user. Also, can anyone inform me the significance and/or advantage of running in cached mode? Also, is there a way for me to run a command through the Exchange Management Shell to update the GAL to all users rather than me going user to user and modifying their settings?

If you see users in Online mode that means AddressList is fine and the issue is with Offline address book. It is not getting download to users properly or exchange server is not able to build it becuse of some issue. Offline address book is chached address list with you, Advantage is everytime your clint will not go to exchange or DC to query for users. And users can acess address list even they are not connected to exchange sevrer. for example laptop users. As OAB gets download to client. Please check if you are getting any offline address book sync warnings or errors on problamatic user.Best Rgds, Ashish | Unified Comunication | MCTS | MCITP | Please remember to select option "Propose As Answer" if solution work for you | My posts hold no assurances, no promises, and they measured no rights.

Also the OAB is only generated every 24 hours by default. So you would have to manually update it and then redownload it on the client side to see the changes that occur during that day. Another issue could be corruption in the ost file causing this as well. deleting and recreating the profile should fix that issue.Chris Morgan

The users that are missing from the OAB have been created well over 24 hours ago. It sounds like I may need to manually update it. How would I go about doing this? [edit] I just went through our exchange server mailbox server and found an error pertaining to OAL Generator. Here is what it reads: OALGen encountered error 80004005 (internal ID 501038a) accessing the public folder store while generating the offline address list for address list '/'. - Default Offline Address Book For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I would manually update the OAB and check the issue. If it doesn't work than create new OAB and try it should be fine. Check the application log and see if you find any event related to it.Gulab | Skype: gulab.mallah

How do I manually update the OAB?\ In the event that it does not work, how do I delete the OAB then create a new one? Please keep in mind that I am not a windows administrator and would need some specific guidance :)

Please check the following links you get complete Idea;- How to Create an Offline Address Book http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124270(EXCHG.80).aspx Exchange 2007 Offline Address Book Web Distribution http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/11/15/431502.aspx to create a new OAB that uses Web-based distribution for Outlook 2007 clients named "New OAB" on SERVER01 by using the default virtual directory, run the following command: New-OfflineAddressBook -Name "New OAB" -AddressLists "\Default Global Address List" -Server SERVER01 -VirtualDirectories "SERVER01\OAB (Default Web Site)" create a new One first and dont delet the old one. point users to new OAB and if it work for you then delete old one. Keep in mind you shoudl give plenty of time to Build complete OAB for you. i would say 24 hours or watch out for events for completion of OAB process.Best Rgds, Ashish | Unified Comunication | MCTS | MCITP | Please remember to select option "Propose As Answer" if solution work for you | My posts hold no assurances, no promises, and they measured no rights.

Read following articles will give you gud idea of OAB:- How to Create an Offline Address Book http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124270(EXCHG.80).aspx Exchange 2007 Offline Address Book Web Distribution http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/11/15/431502.aspx to create a new OAB that uses Web-based distribution for Outlook 2007 clients named "New OAB" on SERVER01 by using the default virtual directory, run the following command: New-OfflineAddressBook -Name "New OAB" -AddressLists "\Default Global Address List" -Server SERVER01 -VirtualDirectories "SERVER01\OAB (Default Web Site)" Please keep in mind give plenty of time for successful build of OAB. i would say 24 hours or watch out for events for successful completion of OAB. Do not delete old OAB, first create new one and force your users to use new OAB. if it works fine for you, delete old one. Best Rgds, Ashish | Unified Comunication | MCTS | MCITP | Please remember to select option "Propose As Answer" if solution work for you | My posts hold no assurances, no promises, and they measured no rights.

Thank you Ashish. I was able to update the OAB and things are working fine now from the client side.